From $20K to $137K in Direct Bookings: The Meta Ads Playbook

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The Direct Booking Problem Every Operator Faces

Eric: I was on a mastermind yesterday with our RPM clients — about 40 short-term rental operators. We consider them top 1% of short-term rental operators around the world. These are companies doing a million, 10 million, 15 million. They have hundreds of listings and big teams. And the number one question we were trying to solve is: how do we get more direct bookings?

Everyone's trying different things from mailers to Facebook ads. And what I started recognizing is that most operators still don't really understand the marketing game behind direct bookings. It's a hard nut to crack when it comes to Meta ads and viral content.

And it seems like you and your team at Hidden Gem have cracked that nut. You've figured out the secret sauce behind driving direct bookings specifically to really unique properties. So tell me, how do you do it? Walk me through this process. I know you've been in marketing for 10-plus years. You're a seasoned marketer and you've brought a lot of value to the short-term rental space. What is working right now for short-term rental hosts and direct bookings, and how do you guys bridge that gap?

Discovery Traffic vs. Search Traffic

Dustin: I'm hearing the exact same thing across the board. Everyone's complaining about the OTAs and the reliance on them and the ranking battle, the oversaturation, the price competition. So what we're trying to do is really help grow direct bookings through different marketing channels, because what a lot of this has in common is it's not just a reliance on OTAs, but a reliance on search traffic.

People searching for places to stay in a destination is always going to be finite — you're limited to whatever the demand is. And it's really just a matter of how well can you rank to get in front of that. At that point in the process, people are already in a comparison mindset. So it's going to be you battling up against a lot of other people.

Our whole goal in this space has been: how do we drive discovery traffic through social media to raise new awareness from people who weren't necessarily searching? If you can showcase incredible videos that capture the experience of your property and put it in front of the right people — communicate with the audience who's actually going to book and not just go for virality in general — you can raise massive amounts of really high-quality awareness.

This is not even that new. There are a lot of resorts and unique stays that have been doing this. But I think what we really helped pioneer was a better strategy for converting that traffic. Because views and likes are great, but they don't pay the bills. Having a systematic way to really drive the traffic from social media to your email list and your website and retarget with Facebook ads — it's been this what we call a "social media funnel strategy" that has been the game changer. Not just leveraging social media, but really converting it.

Which Properties Work Best on Social Media

Eric: We've done something very similar with Freewyld, our cabins. We're right around a 40 to 50% direct bookings through our website. And a majority of our bookings are coming from our social media accounts. We align with influencers and content creators, and we do different giveaways, and we find that drives a lot of traffic. But we're still trying to figure out the metrics behind it and the timing.

Where do you start with all of this? If you're talking to a property manager and they're relying 100% on OTAs, what properties work best in this model? And where do you start? How long do you see it taking to get an ROI?

Dustin: That's actually been one thing we've been back and forth on for several years now — really figuring out who is going to thrive on social media marketing with this strategy versus who is really better built out for search.

If you have commoditized inventory — say condo rentals in a hotspot destination like Destin, Florida — social media would definitely be secondary. It's not like it wouldn't work, but it would be secondary to getting in front of all the massive amounts of search demand to your destination. So the core strategy there is SEO, Google ads, ranking on OTAs.

But if you move down the spectrum to the very unique stays, they're just going to have the easiest time getting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views on social media, and really attracting those aspirational buyers who are getting hooked and maybe less price-sensitive because they've seen 10 reels.

We've tested with a lot of different styles of brands, and to some extent it actually works for everybody. It's just going to be a lot easier and more effective the more of a unique experience you have to offer. The more compelling the videos that showcase your experience, the better.

For example, we've had property management companies who have traditional homes — great homes, great amenities, really centered around a particular destination — and then having content that positions you as the expert in that destination. Going to national parks around Arizona and then tying that back to your properties being the home base for that experience has worked surprisingly well.

Why Niching Down Is Step One

Eric: If you were a property manager with 15 to 20 listings, majority of your bookings are on Airbnb and other OTAs, what would you recommend as the first step?

Dustin: My biggest recommendation is to niche down. Decide on a niche that you can really build a brand around. The toughest thing to market, especially on social media, is when you have 20 properties in four different destinations and each property is different. You have cabins, beachfront, condos — it's just a mix. You're not going to make videos of any of those properties, have people go back to your profile, learn more, sign up for email, go to your website, and really see you as the best choice.

For example, when we have a property manager who is completely based out of Joshua Tree — 100 properties, all upscale luxury homes — you can absolutely own that niche. Whether you show Joshua Tree as the destination in your video clips or some of the properties in your portfolio, people are going to start seeing you as the luxury Joshua Tree go-to. That is so much easier to build a brand around and start driving direct bookings through an audience that connects that to you.

Eric: The first step is to take a step back, look at your business, and decide: who are you? What's the identity of your company? I preach this all the time. If you're serving everyone, you're serving no one.

When we built Freewyld Cabins, we took about six months to get super clear on who we were as a company. Who we're serving, what's our guest avatar. It's very clear: our travelers are coming from LA, Orange County, or San Diego. It's a couple looking to disconnect into the mountains and be in a design-forward property. And they're willing to spend more money on those properties.

The Social Media Funnel Strategy

Dustin: It really helps refine the messaging too. One of the strategies on social media is when you're trying to grow bottom-funnel results and conversions, it's better to gear your content strategy toward really communicating to that niche.

For example, when your videos open up and you have a hook, you want to call out the audience — like "couples stay in Joshua Tree" — so that people in New York are going to pay less attention, but people in LA are going to pay more attention because this applies to them. Meta — Instagram, Facebook — are going to pick up on that attention like a hawk and then guide all of your content to speak to that niche.

You can only do that when post after post you're speaking to that one audience. Even Instagram and Facebook start to see you as that authority — that's who your audience is and that's how you scale and grow the audience. As opposed to if you're distributed across beachfront in Miami and condos in downtown Nashville — it's so dispersed, it's hard to target, communicate, or really build an algorithm around.

The Email Capture Strategy

Dustin: If you ever do ads, if you can't directly track the revenue that you're driving through it, if you're looking at metrics like just website traffic or clicks, you'll never really know what's working or know whether to increase budget, double down, or try something new.

The best thing from social media is that people rarely will convert off of just seeing a nice video. So the biggest change we made for everybody was pointing everyone who discovers you on social media to an email signup. Having a landing page as opposed to just going straight to the website where you can focus on your core offer, capture their email address, and then have emails that keep showing up, teaching them more about your business, your brand, what makes you special.

Eric: So you're saying it's harder to convert an Instagram follower directly to booking the cabin versus "this looks awesome, let me join the emailing list." Someone giving their email is a much easier ask than getting them to book your property off a Facebook ad or a post.

Dustin: Exactly. All of our Facebook ads and organic social media is really driving people to just make a micro commitment — here's a core offer, like get 10% off or $50 off your first stay. Sign up for the email list. That's the trade-off. And then we'll send you the promo code as well as a lot of other emails that teach you about the business, the brand, reviews — all those things that could warm up that audience. It's a nurture sequence. It allows you to keep following up with all these people who showed interest.

Then it's also a way to attribute. We cross-reference all of the emails that come in from TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, ads, with the emails showing up at the PMS to literally show a direct ROI. Because the emails are going to convert weeks or months later — it won't be immediate. But having that data allows you to really know what's working and increase the ad budget.

Paid Ads Are Compressing the Timeline

Dustin: The reality for the last three to five years in the social media space has been: you've got to post organically, try to post high-quality content because that builds the track record for Instagram and Facebook to see you as a really good account to get more exposure. But you've got to stick with it for many months — at least three months before you see any results, six months for it to really start getting traction, and nine months to a year to really see a different business.

That's actually luckily changed in the last couple of months where we found ad strategies on Meta to really propel this forward. The very first post can get thousands of views, tens of comments, and a thousand followers within a couple of weeks — and 10,000 followers within your first two months. Not that that's the goal, but it also generates a trackable ROI off of the paid ads. So when what used to be a grind has now — with a reliable paid ad strategy that can achieve that growth, push things forward faster, and also attribute it to a direct return on ad spend — that's been a game changer. That answer has changed to: the first month of posting, if not the second month.

The Poconos Case Study

Dustin: I've always been blown away with what types of properties can get results. I've seen old rundown cabins get millions of views because they have this rustic charm. If there's an audience of people for it, then there's an audience on the 1 billion Instagram users. You really just have to figure out how to communicate to that audience.

We had a client with 10 really large homes — sleeps 15 to 20 people — in the Poconos. I remember looking at the properties. They have amenities — hot tub, barrel sauna, pools — but they still look like traditional homes. And the first month of posting, they literally took off, but it was because of this ad strategy. One post got half a million views within a couple of weeks. And the direct bookings went from $20,000 the previous month to $137,000. So it's definitely possible to get good traction right out the gate, and you don't have to be super unique to do it.

Content Creators vs. Influencers

Dustin: We've worked with a lot of content creators and influencers. Content creators are valuable — the people who could shoot that exceptional content. But as far as influencers — having that be a traffic source — we've gone down so many rabbit holes. We've tried so many of them. And nine out of 10 feel like a dud. You really don't know if it moved any measurable amount.

Once you really figure out paid ads on driving an attributable ROI and the fact that it's trackable, scalable — you don't have to get another collaboration, you literally just increase the budget — you'll never go back to influencers. Because the time difference is nothing, but the ROI isn't even comparable in any realm with what Meta ads can do. These people are leveraging the reach that they can give you, but Meta controls the whole platform and they know everything about every user. When they want to get you results, because they have a $100 billion a year ad platform, they can drive results better than anything else.

Eric: To clarify, there is a difference between content creator and an influencer. The content creators are individuals showing up with cameras and creating content. It's not necessarily about them, but about them in the experience and about the property. The influencer is "look at me in this nice place."

Dustin: The content creator's deliverables are: here's 40 stunning photos and 50 stunning video clips that you could use to market your brand for years. That's a lot of value. Influencers: "I'll do a collaboration post or a story and leverage my 100,000 followers to put your business in front of all these people." Compared to what Meta's reach and targeting can do — no question.

Giveaways Behind a Paid Ad Strategy

Dustin: We do leverage the giveaway hook because it's an incredible hook to get people's attention and hold it and then get them to pay attention to your business. That's why giveaways have been working in this industry for years. But we use it behind a paid ad strategy. We don't use it in terms of needing to leverage an influencer or creator to do the giveaway. We can do it ourselves using ads as the primary medium.

The ads drive to the page where the whole page points them to the email signup. The main call to action is to follow, join, learn, be a part of it. With a hook to the giveaway, you can teach them everything they need to know about your business through that 20-30 second ad and then get them to follow, sign up for your email list. All those nurture touchpoints they'll see over the next couple of weeks do the heavy lifting for them to become ingrained in the ecosystem and become a fan, a follower, and then eventually book.

Crowdfunding for STR Development

Dustin: There's a lot of hype right now around crowdfunding for lodging. Basically pioneered by a company called LaunchBoom. The strategy is: you run paid ads toward an offer to join a VIP list. These ads feature renderings of what your property is going to look like. Say you have the land, the permitting, and just need funding to build a micro resort of cabins or rentals.

You spin up an Indiegogo campaign and then run ads toward the VIP list. They pay $50 to join — and what they get is early bird access to when your calendars open and a discount, like 30% off. These ads toward the $50 deposit in a lot of cases can actually liquidate itself — you're spending less than $50 to get a $50 deposit. Then you scale that to the point where people are raising hundreds of thousands and millions to fund these cool projects. And every bit of that marketing is up our alley.

Eric: It's almost better as a proof of concept to fully validate the demand prior to building — based off of renderings — where you would then get traditional financing to support the project.

Where to Find Dustin and HiddenGem Media

Dustin: If you go to my website, Hidden Gem Media, I actually have a video on there that teaches our whole marketing strategy — A to Z, how you leverage social media, the email signup strategy, retargeting. If you're the kind of person who wants to DIY, the information's out there. Or if you want to outsource it, you could apply to work with us.

We really want to work with the businesses that are primed to get incredible results. Property management companies above 10 to 20 properties and niched — really helps the marketing strategy — up to large property managers of 100 to 200-plus properties. We also work with vacation rental owners with a portfolio of 10-plus cabins, micro resorts, boutique hotels — pretty much anything in the experiential space.

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